It is a beautifully designed object. The affluent use it to cool down, puffing smoke from their mouths and nostrils. In the Arab world, men sit in circles on a mat in the open, the object before them. It is also common in highbrow clubs and hotels. Hookah “is a cool way of smoking”, so say those who use it.
The device has found its way onto campuses, where student-smokers take delight in using it. To them, it is bye-bye cigarette, welcome hookah.
But Hookah (or shisha, as it is popularly called) is enjoyable and hazardous. Hookah is a single or multi-stemmed apparatus for smoking flavoured tobacco in which the smoke is passed through a water basin before inhalation. For smokers, the experience and enjoyment are nothing compared with the satisfaction derived from smoking cigarette. From the thickness of its smoke and its tobacco content, Hookah is seen as the favourite of smokers, who derive pleasure in puffing dense clouds of smoke from their noses and mouths.
The apparatus comes with four major components – a bowl, pipe, hose and smoke chamber- which are set up by smokers. This is unlike a cigarette, which is lit effortlessly.
An average Hookah smoking session lasts more than 40 minutes, in contrast to cigarette, which burns out in a few minutes. However, in an hour-long of smoking hookah, smokers consume about 100 to 200 times the volume of tobacco in a cigarette.
Also, the chemical composition of tobacco in a cigarette and hookah are different. The charcoal in hookah causes the tobacco, which is mixed with other ingredients, to be heated at a lower temperature, in contrast to a cigarette, where the tobacco is burnt at high temperature.
Since smokers consume higher tobacco in Hookah than in a stick of cigarette, it is believed hookah is hazardous to health. Despite the health consequence, student-smokers are gradually changing from cigarette to tobacco-rich hookah, spending thousands to buy the instrument.
A complete set of hookah is expensive. The least affordable electronic hookah goes for N2,100, compared to a stick of cigarette that sells for N10.
In 2005, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that water-pipe (hookah) smoking poses a serious health hazard to smokers and people around them. The body said hookah is not a safe alternative to cigarette smoking.
But student-smokers are not deterred by this warning. A single hookah is enough for a group of 10 to smoke tobacco to their satisfaction. Some smokers claim hookah is good to keep the body warm during the cold. But in all weathers, the instrument is not far away from student-smokers.
To the surprise of many, hookah smokers are not limited to male students; female undergraduates also engage in it.
To Abu Bakre, a student of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in Zaria, Kaduna State, hookah is the best way to smoke. “I smoke it whenever I hang out with my friends. We catch fun, smoking it together. I love the gum and mint flavour a lot. I smoke it twice in a week. It has made me stop smoking cigarette and I am happy about it. I used to exhaust a pack in a day but now, I prefer hookah because of its flavour.”
To relax, Solomon Ebiaku, an HND II Accounting student of Moshood Abiola Polythecnic (MAPOLY) in Abeokuta, Ogun State smoke hookah. He said the instrument comes with a different smoking experience. He said: “It is something that I do once in a while. Although, some people smoke it daily but personally, I see nothing bad in it. Whether I smoke hookah or not should not be anybody’s headache. I believe I have rights to my privacy. Hookah has helped to reduce the number of cigarette smokers among students. Cigarette is cheap and harmful but hookah is expensive but reasonable.”
In some campuses, hookah is not readily available to students. They only have opportunity to smoke it in clubs and hotels.
With N1,000, you can enjoy hookah 100 times more than the way you enjoy cigarette, Supo Laniyan, a 500-Level Agriculture student at the Olabisi Onabanjo University in Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State said.
“The only thing that is disturbing is the abuse. Normally, the bottom container is meant to be filled with water but students now fill it with gin and rum. Also, the flavour is meant to be inhaled without being mixed but smokers here have devised means of mixing it with weed and other hard drugs. This distorts the concept,” he said.
According to Ibrahim Salako, an ND II Civil Engineering student of the Federal Polytechnic in Ilaro (ILARO POLY), Ogun State, hookah smokers are deceived by its sweet flavours. “The bottomline is that hookah smokers die faster than people who smoke cigarette because carbon in hookah is equivalent to 200 sticks of cigarette. So what makes hookah less harmful?” he wondered.
Abimbola Solola, a 300-Level Sociology student of the University of Ilorin (UNILORIN), said: “Hookah is dangerous to our health, but the manner students are getting addicted to it is worrisome. It has become an everyday thing on campus now.”
Odunayo Whyte, a 300-Level Business and Education Studies student at the Federal College of Education (FCE), Abeokuta,said he learnt about hookah when the photogragh of a female smoker went viral on the social media.
He said: “I discovered that students who smoke hookah are being influenced by people who are supposed to guide them. It is now everywhere on campuses today. We even have hookah competition, where students in various schools post their pictures on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to compare thickness of smoke. This is reality of ill in our society.”
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